SYRIAN REBELS TIED TO AL-QAEDA PLAY KEY ROLE IN WAR

Group’s success poses a problem for U.S. and other nations that oppose extremists

BAGHDAD 
The lone Syrian rebel group with an explicit stamp of approval from al-Qaeda has become one of the uprising’s most effective fighting forces, posing a stark challenge to the United States and other countries that want to support the rebels but not Islamic extremists.

Money flows to the group, the Nusra Front, from like-minded donors abroad. Its fighters, a small minority of the rebels, have the boldness and skill to storm fortified positions and lead other battalions to capture military bases and oil fields. As their successes mount, they gather more weapons and attract more fighters.

The group is a direct offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqi officials and former Iraqi insurgents say, which has contributed veteran fighters and weapons.

“This is just a simple way of returning the favor to our Syrian brothers that fought with us on the lands of Iraq,” said an insurgent veteran of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who said he helped lead Nusra Front’s efforts in Syria. The United States, sensing time may be running out for Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, hopes to isolate the group to prevent it from inheriting Syria or fighting on after Assad’s fall to pursue its goal of an Islamic state.

As the United States pushes the Syrian opposition to organize a viable alternative government, it plans to blacklist the Nusra Front as a terrorist organization, making it illegal for Americans to have financial dealings with the group and most likely prompting similar sanctions from Europe. The hope is to remove one a big obstacles to increasing Western support for the rebellion: the fear money and arms could flow to a jihadi group that could further destabilize Syria and harm Western interests.

The Nusra Front’s ally, al-Qaeda in Iraq, is the Sunni insurgent group that killed numerous U.S. troops in Iraq and sowed widespread sectarian strife with suicide bombings against Shiites and other religious and ideological opponents. The Iraqi group played an active role in founding the Nusra Front and provides it with money, expertise and fighters, said Maj. Faisal al-Issawi, an Iraqi security official who tracks jihadi activities.

But blacklisting the Nusra Front could backfire. It would pit the United States against some of the best fighters in the insurgency that it aims to support.

While some Syrian rebels fear the group’s growing power, others work closely with it and admire it — or, at least, its military achievements — and are loath to end their cooperation.

Also reported Saturday, rebel commanders from across Syria have joined forces under a united command they hope will increase coordination between diverse fighting groups and streamline the pathway for arms essential to their struggle against Assad.

Disorganization has bedeviled Syria’s rebel movement since its birth late last year, when some protesters gave up on peaceful means to bring down Assad’s regime and took up arms.